Sean Connery had sort of a career before he became James Bond,
appearing in a Tarzan film here, a Disney outing there. Pierce Brosnan
seemed to be on firmer ground prior to his Bond years, what with a hit
TV series, "Remington Steele" (but almost no movies, certainly none in
a large role). But his star outings just prior to going into Bondage
tended to be rather like this trifle, a handsomely-produced but utterly
ordinary thriller. Although it's not terrible, watching "Live Wire" is
much the same as watching 90 minutes of blank film. If he hadn't become
James Bond, he probably would have continued on in this vein.
Fortunately for all of us, but especially for Brosnan, he did take up
the 007 mantle.

"Live Wire" is set in Washington, DC, and the wide screen (we didn't
check the "full frame" versions on the same disc) makes full advantage
of reasonably extensive location shooting. However, it's really a
Canadian film, and is cast like one. Brosnan is the most significant
star; intense character actor Ron Silver appears occasionally in a
thankless role (the whole film is thankless, actually) which gives him
few opportunities to strut his stuff. Love interest Lisa Eilbacher
fares better, but Ben Cross, as principal villain (with the carefully
contrived name of Mikhail Rashid, a little Russian, a little Arab), is
given a role so confused and so thin that all he can do is grin or
glare. (Which is pretty much the extent of Cross's acting abilities
anyway.)

There's an opening title which has become uncomfortably ironic: it
explains that just about every country in the world has been the target
of terrorism, except the United States. "Until now," the note finishes
ominously. But the movie that follows really has nothing to do at all
with terrorism as we've come to know it. Terrorists are usually driven
by religion, ethnicity or politics; the bad guys here are just crooks
after ten million bucks. Despite Cross' Russian/Arabic name, he might
as well have been Icelandic/French.

It's based on an interesting though preposterous premise. In the
opening scene, one of Rashid's henchmen switches carafes of water in a
restaurant. The senator who's the target downs some water; Cross,
elsehwere in the restaurant, glances at his watch and ducks outside. A
moment later, there's a fiery explosion, blowing out the windows of the
restaurant and incinerating a passerby.

FBI bomb-disposal expert Danny O'Neill (Brosnan), tossing off
wisecracks, investigates, but he and the scientific researchers at the
Bureau are baffled: there's no sign of any explosive. Except that the
senator exploded.

Danny has other problems: his little daughter recently drowned in the
backyard swimming pool, and Danny and his wife Terry (Eilbacher) have
become so estranged she's begun an affair with Senator Frank Traveres
(Silver). Danny is very bitter, Terry hovers on the brink of
apologetic, Traveres is a swine. His credibility is not enhanced by a
haircut that makes him look like Moe Howard without bangs. It's less
than no surprise to discover near the end that he's linked to Rashid.
The film would have been more worthy had no link been established. And
if they'd taken the time to indicate why Terry would have been
attracted to him in the first place.

After another senator (Philip Baker Hall) is killed when his aide
explodes (after drinking the sinister water), and we learn that all
this is about a vote backed by three senators on an arms bill. Somehow
each of them made big bucks, and Rashid wants his $10 million share for
whatever it is he did. (We never know.) Now he's after the third
senator, Traveres, but takes care of a henchman along the way.

He's acquired a strange formula from a scientist -- whom he stabs to
death with a fountain pen -- for an explosive that looks exactly like
water. When drunk, it's triggered by stomach (or any) acid, and
detonates in a cloud of fire. We also learn, however, that it
definitely isn't water, so why don't any of the targets notice a
difference in taste?

This premise prompted director Christian Duguay to use lots of water
imagery. It's okay in the impressive credits, but is wildly overused in
the movie itself; for example, there's a cut from a swimming pool to a
brimming chuckhole in a street. It gets completely soggy at the end,
when a character is informed that his pregnant wife's "water just
broke."

The explosive scenes are very well handled, with innocent bystanders
going up like torches in several of the sequences. When a judge
detonates in her own courtroom, windows bulge out like balloons, the
glass melting and expanding from the heat. In these scenes, the sound
effects are crisp and clear, but not very interesting; however, in the
few gunfight scenes, the sound effects are excellent, loud, bright and
full of impact. But these are the only areas in which the movie shows
much imagination. It was not imaginative to include a bomb-disposal
robot with a penchant for pinching Brosnan's ass.

Executive producer Bart Baker wrote the routine script, which provides
very little in the line of characterization, and a great deal in the
lines of stereotypes and cliches. The explosive water is an interesting
sci-fi gimmick, but it never rises above that level. The handsome,
well-photographed film (cameraman was Jeff Jur) is too familiar and too
routine. But "Goldeneye" was waiting around the corner for Pierce
Brosnan.

Apart from a trailer, the film has no extras, but does offer an unusual
feature. It includes four different prints of the feature: rated and
unrated "full screen" editions, and rated and unrated letterboxed
editions. There's only one minute of running time difference between
the rated and unrated versions, but New Line Home Entertainment should
be thanked for offering this unusual choice. We watched the unrated
letterboxed editions, and since we're such thoroughgoing professionals,
also checked the hot bathtub sex scene between Brosnan and Eilbacher in
the unrated version, learning that cuts in this sequence resulted in an
R rating.

more details

sound format:

Dolby Digital stereo

special features:

only
extra is a trailer, but disc includes four versions of the film:
widescreen rated and unrated, "full frame" rated and unrated